Re: Dual boot

From: Kent West (westk_at_acu.edu)
Date: 02/17/04

  • Next message: Kent West: "Re: installing a new kernal" 
    Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 14:16:06 -0600
To: Debian User List <debian-user@lists.debian.org>

    Michael Satterwhite wrote:

    >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
    >Hash: SHA1
    >
    >Has anyone set up Debian on a machine that dual boots with Win2K? If so, are
    >there any "gotchas" that I ought to be aware of?
    >
    >
    >

    I've done it several times, with no real issues.

    I've also done it several times with WinXPPro, but just this week I've
    been fighting such a beast on a Dell GX270 that is causing me no end of
    grief.

    First, the video chipset doesn't appear to be supported in the version
    of X shipping in unstable; the best I can do is 640x480 at decent color
    depth, or 8-bit color at 1024x768.

    Secondly, and more to your question, I've got a 2GB partition with
    DOS/Win95 (Win95 doesn't run except in Safe Mode on these machines, btw,
    I guess because of hardware being too new), followed by a 15GB partition
    with WinXPPro, followed by a 15GB spare partition (was going to
    experiment with VMWare), followed by several Linux partitions (/, usr,
    usr/src, etc (no, I mean 'et cetera', not '/etc' :-) )).

    I can get all the OSes installed and working, but as soon as I run lilo
    to fix the mbr, WinXP becomes unbootable; the drive letter changes from
    D: (which is how WinXP installed) to E:. I've been unable to repair XP
    in any way except to do a clean install. The clean install works fine,
    until I re-run lilo to fix the mbr, and then the drive letter in XP
    shifts again and XP again becomes unbootable.

    I know it's not really the hardware's fault, but it sure is easy to
    blame it, because I can't run X on it, it won't run Win95, and I can't
    keep Debian and WinXP on it (not that _I_ want XP on the box, but it
    needs to be multiboot for Helpdesk purposes, which is where the PC is
    going). Stupid Dell. 

    -- 
Kent
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